THE OBERHAUSEN MANIFESTO
Tuesday, 28 October – Tuesday, 18 November 2014
http://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/lon/ver/en13349651v.htm
Goethe-Institut London, 50 Princes Gate, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2PH
£3 / free for Goethe-Institut language students and library members, booking essential
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In connection with the series Vlado Kristl: Death to the Audience at Tate Modern (Friday 7 November – Sunday 16 November 2014) the Goethe-Institut London will show four programmes of films by signatories of the Oberhausen Manifesto.
Read out by Ferdinand Khittl at the International Short Film Festival in Oberhausen in February 1962, where Kristl’s Don Kihot won the main award, the manifesto proclaimed the birth of a new aesthetically, politically and financially independent German cinema and the death of the moribund conventions and structures of the 1950s film industry. There were 26 signatories, among them Alexander Kluge, Edgar Reitz, Peter Schamoni, and Ferdinand Khittl.
When Vlado Kristl arrived in Munich in 1963 from Zagreb, it was with members of the Oberhausen circle that he made his first films in Germany and he also profited from funding made available in the wake of the manifesto, though relations were not without tensions.
All films are shown with English subtitles.
LINK: Vlado Kristl - Death the the Audience
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/eventseries/vlado-kristl-death-audience
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THE OBERHAUSEN MANIFESTO - PROGRAMME DETAILS
The Oberhausen Manifesto - Programme 1: Short Films 1
Tuesday, 28 October, 7pm
http://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/lon/ver/en13349670v.htm
The first programme focuses on films made between 1958 and 1960, showing that already in the late 1950s filmmakers were finding a new language. Documentaries, more easily realised on a small budget and open to experimentation with sound and montage, dominate the programme. The influence of Neo-Realism shows in beautifully photographed films about Crete’s rural population (Glühendes Eiland Kreta, Pitt Koch, 1958), and salt production in Italy Salinas, Raimond Ruehl, 1960). Spontaneous impressions of Munich’s new Italian espresso bars (Menschen im Espresso, Herbert Vesely, 1958), contrast with the more solemn portrait of the ruin of the city’s opera house (Schicksal einer Oper, Bernhard Dörries, Edgar Reitz, Stefan Meuschel, 1958). An explosion of colour and filmic ideas is used to describe the many uses of magnetic sound recording in Ferdinand Khittl’s outstanding experimental industrial film Das Magische Band (The Magic Tape, 1959).
Programme Details:
Menschen im Espresso [People in Espresso*], West Germany 1958, 16 mins., Directed and written by: Herbert Vesely.
Schicksal einer Oper [Fates of an Opera*], West Germany 1958, 10 min., Directed and written by: Bernhard Dörries, Edgar Reitz, Stefan Meuschel.
Glühendes Eiland Kreta [Glowing Island of Crete*], West Germany 1958, 12 mins., Directed and photographed by: Pitt Koch.
Das magische Band [The Magic Tape*], West Germany 1959, 21 mins., Directed by: Ferdinand Khittl.
Moskau ruft [Moscow is Calling*], West Germany 1959, 12 mins., Directed and written by: Peter Schamoni.
Stunde X [Hour X*], West Germany 1959, 4 mins., Directed, written and edited by: Bernhard Dörries.
Trab Trab [Trot, Trot*], West Germany 1959, 11 mins., Directed by: Detten Schleiermacher.
Salinas, West Germany 1960, 11 mins., Directed and written by: Raimond Ruehl.
Schatten [Shadows], West Germany 1960, 10 mins., Directed by: Hansjürgen Pohland.
*Literal translation of the film title
Total Running Time: 107 minutes
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The Oberhausen Manifesto - Programme 2: Short Films 2
Thursday, 30 October, 7pm
http://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/lon/ver/en13349676v.htm
The films in the second programme were made between 1961 and 1964. It includes films that address Germany’s national socialist past such as Brutalität in Stein (1961), a study of national socialist architecture, directed by Alexander Kluge and Peter Schamoni, or Plakate der Weimarer Republik (1962) by Haro Senft, which traces the rise of fascism exclusively through the posters of the era. The programme also includes the polemical and controversial film Notizen aus dem Althmühltal (1961) by Hans Rolf Strobel and Heinrich Tichawsky, a portrait of a town and its population ignored by the ‘Wirtschaftswunder,’ and Edgar Reitz’s more optimistic tour of the world of modern communication technology Kommunikation (1961) with all its peculiar futuristic sounds.
Brutalität in Stein [Brutality in Stone*], West Germany 1961, 11 mins., Directed and written by: Peter Schamoni, Alexander Kluge.
Kommunikation [Communication*], West Germany 1961, 11 mins., Directed, written and photographed by: Edgar Reitz.
Notizen aus dem Altmühltal [Notes From the Altmühl Valley*], West Germany 1961,17 mins., Directed and written by: Hans Rolf Strobel, Heinrich Tichawsky.
Plakate der Weimarer Republik [Posters From the Weimar Republic*], West Germany 1962, 10 mins., Directed by: Haro Senft.
Süden im Schatten [South in the Shadow*], West Germany 1962, 9 mins., Directed and photographed by: Franz-Josef Spieker.
Das Unkraut [Weed*], West Germany 1962, 11 mins., Directed by: Wolfgang Urchs.
Es muß ein Stück vom Hitler sein [It has to be a piece of Hitler*], 11 mins., West Germany 1963, Directed and written by: Walter Krüttner.
Anmeldung [Registration*], West Germany 1964, 10 mins., Directed, written and edited by: Rob Houwer.
Marionetten [Marionettes*], West Germany 1964, 11 mins., Directed and written by: Boris von Borresholm.
Granstein, West Germany 1965, 13 mins., Directed by: Christian Doermer.
*Literal translation of the film title
Total Running Time: 114 minutes.
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The Oberhausen Manifesto - Programme 3: Ferdinand Khittl: Die Parallelstraße (The Parallel Road)
Monday, 3 November, 7pm
http://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/lon/ver/en13349682v.htm
Premiered in June 1962, Ferdinand Khittl’s opus magnum was never distributed and then forgotten. It was recently rediscovered and received recognition as a unique masterpiece of German cinema.
Gathered in a dark room and guided by a minute-taker, five men must classify visual documents filmed by an unidentified person. The exotic locations and vibrant colours of the films they watch contrast with the sober black and white of the jury room, where order slowly gives way to absurdity.
FRG 1962, colour & b/w, 83 mins. With English subitltes. Directed by Ferdinand Khittl. With Friedrich Joloff, Erst Marbeck, Wilfried Schröpfer, Henry van Lack, Werner Uschkurat, Herbert Tiede
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The Oberhausen Manifesto - Programme 3: Peter Schamoni: Schonzeit für Füchse (Closed Season For Foxes)
Tuesday, 18 November, 7pm
http://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/lon/ver/en13349691v.htm
This debut film by Peter Schamoni, who produced Vlado Kristl’s Arme Leute / Poor People (1963), portrays two young intellectuals that detest the bourgeois world they move in but cannot break away from. Not the most radical film to emerge from the Oberhausen circle, it however brings a refreshingly deadpan tone and fresh documentary-like realism to the story. It won the Silver Bear (Grand Jury Prize) at the Berlin Film Festival in 1966.
West Germany 1965 / 1966. b/w, 92 mins. With English subtitles. Directed by Peter Schamoni. With Helmut Förnbacher, Christian Doermer, Monika Peitsch, Edda Seippel, Willy Birgel.
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